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“Radar” Software Controls Physical Therapy Claims Flow

BESTPT Billing Radar, perhaps the BEST-KEPT secret in the medical billing industry?

Are you anxious about insurance claims payment delays? Needless to say, lack of control over your physical therapy claims process also affects your practice cash flow negatively and robs you of any peace of mind.

Ultimately, your business is doomed to die if you cannot track and predict your cash flow easily. And since a stressed out practice owner drives away patients, the growth of your physical therapy practice is further hindered. Without sufficient growth you cannot achieve any long-term profitability.

Of course, you don’t have the time to micromanage each billing aspect. There are just too many failing or rejected claims to address with limited resources. But there is a high price to pay if you fail to follow up on your physical therapy claims: reduced cash flow for your practice.

Maybe you are blaming your untrained staff for the lack of consistent and effective physical therapy billing performance. But without the right tools like effective physical therapy software, no one can adequately keep track and follow up on all underpaid and denied claims. Claims that are not corrected are forgotten and affect the entire practice negatively. In fact, you cannot even evaluate your physical therapy billing performance without tracking your active claims backlog since it helps you determine the percentage of your AR past 120 days.

Nevertheless, managing a physical therapy practice is not all about claims processing, but rather a balancing act of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The real challenge lies in prioritizing tasks since urgent but easy problems often delay the handling of more important matters. Seeing the big picture consistently instead of just putting out random fires ultimately determines the quality of your claims workflow management and physical therapy billing performance.

But without a centralized organization of tasks and performance it is virtually impossible to keep your eyes on the big picture. As a result, choosing the right physical therapy software functionality is vital for accomplishing this goal.

Naturally, the best physical therapy software is useless if you cannot configure it for your unique practice workflow. That’s why you should choose a system that provides adequate support in terms of customization and configuration.

At the end of the day every PT just wants to focus on treating patients rather than learning new physical therapy software. Hence, ease of use for workflow management is paramount. Equally important is the presentation of all data in an easy to digest way to make a meaningful analysis possible since text presentations of complex data is difficult and boring.

That’s why bestPT uses the Radar as your personal Practice Health Monitor. It displays multiple aspects of your practice at once and every member of your staff can see it on bestPT’s software Home page every time they log on. Since the data collection is automated you don’t have to worry about wasting time on looking up your practice stats, including claims status. In fact, your entire practice staff can work as a team and monitor trends with the radar to detect any problem areas before they cripple your practice performance. You can even customize your workflow KPIs so you can track the improvement of your practice performance over time. We also help you see and understand the big picture by providing a daily radar analysis and monthly Health Checks with your BESTPT Excellence Center Director and team members as part of our consistent follow up process.

Want to see practice Radar in action? Register for your Demo+ now. Subscribers can contact their PT Excellence Center Director to configure your Radar so you can track your physical therapy claims workflow and reach your practice goals.

Control Your Physical Therapy Claim Flow Visually Using Radar Software

physical therapy software_claims trackingAre you anxious about insurance claims payment delays? Needless to say, lack of control over your physical therapy claims process also affects your practice cash flow negatively and robs you of any peace of mind.

Ultimately, your business is doomed to die if you cannot track and predict your cash flow easily. And since a stressed out practice owner drives away patients, the growth of your physical therapy practice is further hindered. Without sufficient growth you cannot achieve any long-term profitability.

Of course, you don’t have the time to micromanage each billing aspect. There are just too many failing or rejected claims to address with limited resources. But there is a high price to pay if you fail to follow up on your physical therapy claims: reduced cash flow for your practice.

Maybe you are blaming your untrained staff for the lack of consistent and effective physical therapy billing performance. But without the right tools like effective physical therapy software, no one can adequately keep track and follow up on all underpaid and denied claims. Claims that are not corrected are forgotten and affect the entire practice negatively. In fact, you cannot even evaluate your physical therapy billing performance without tracking your active claims backlog since it helps you determine the percentage of your AR past 120 days.

Nevertheless, managing a physical therapy practice is not all about claims processing, but rather a balancing act of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The real challenge lies in prioritizing tasks since urgent but easy problems often delay the handling of more important matters. Seeing the big picture consistently instead of just putting out random fires ultimately determines the quality of your claims workflow management and physical therapy billing performance.

But without a centralized organization of tasks and performance it is virtually impossible to keep your eyes on the big picture. As a result, choosing the right physical therapy software functionality is vital for accomplishing this goal.

Naturally, the best physical therapy software is useless if you cannot configure it for your unique practice workflow. That’s why you should choose a system that provides adequate support in terms of customization and configuration.

At the end of the day every PT just wants to focus on treating patients rather than learning new physical therapy software. Hence, ease of use for workflow management is paramount. Equally important is the presentation of all data in an easy to digest way to make a meaningful analysis possible since text presentations of complex data is difficult and boring.

That’s why bestPT uses the Radar as your personal Practice Health Monitor. It displays multiple aspects of your practice at once and every member of your staff can see it on bestPT’s Home page every time they log on. Since the data collection is automated you don’t have to worry about wasting time on looking up your practice stats, including claims status. In fact, your entire practice staff can work as a team and monitor trends with the radar to detect any problem areas before they cripple your practice performance. You can even customize your workflow KPIs so you can track the improvement of your practice performance over time. We also help you see and understand the big picture by providing a daily radar analysis and monthly Health Checks with your SPOC as consistent follow up process.

Contact your SPOC to configure your Radar so you can track your physical therapy claims workflow and reach your practice goals.

How to balance physical therapy billing with patient flow and compliance

physical-therapy-billing_radar-chartYou can avoid sleepless nights and eliminate worries about your physical therapy practice’s performance by using bestPT’s Radar Chart to monitor the health of your practice. Practice management is a balancing act of optimizing multiple aspects of your physical therapy practice simultaneously so you can reach your goal of building your dream practice. Tracking physical therapy billing performance with patient flow, cash flow, and compliance stats automatically and simultaneously will help you keep an eye on the big picture while also getting the necessary details to make the right management decisions on a daily basis.

How to see the forest without losing sight of every tree?  You may perfect your physical therapy billing process, but without solid patient relationships you will have no growth. You may perfect your patient referral processes, but without a compliant visit documentation system you are exposed to post-payment audits and risk your cash and practicing license. While it’s important to evaluate every physical therapy billing performance detail, you cannot afford to lose sight of the big picture and risk focusing on a wrong priority.

You can configure the Practice Health Monitor/Radar Chart to match your physical therapy practice’s goals, as well as allow individual staff members to track relevant metrics that contribute to the overall goals. Unlike other reports within bestPT’s software platform, the Practice Health Monitor displays multiple selected metrics on a single, easy-to-digest snapshot (radar chart) with the option to view more detailed information in individual graphs when clicking on each metric. This can help you discover if you are meeting your personal performance goals, including physical therapy billing metrics. Even more importantly, you can compare current stats to past performances to discover any positive or negative trends.

Physical therapy billing performance tracking is not only good for teamwork but also for your practice’s overall bottom line. Taking time to do this before the actual go live date can help you as physical therapy practice owner hit the ground running in the right direction and allow every staff member to take ownership of their role in your practice’s success.

Before you or your team can benefit from this powerful Practice Health Monitor, though, you need to review the individual physical therapy billing metrics for each team member with your assigned account manager (a.k.a. SPOC). Your SPOC will then configure each user’s home screen with the appropriate charts and radar metrics. For example: you, as a practice owner, may want real time insight into physical therapy billing metrics, such as charges, cash collected, claims paid, visit volume, no shows, no future appointments, workbench claims and PIP performance. However, you may only want your front office staff focused on no shows, no future appointments and work bench claims.

Here is how you can configure and use your radar chart once it’s on your home screen:

1. Define Your Radar Chart (configure settings)

  • Click on “Personal Preferences”
  • Select any of the 18 available metrics
  • Choose which KPIs to display on the Radar Chart with the check marked boxes under the Show Heading (incl. minimum and maximum growth)
  • Configure colors

2. Use your radar chart

  • Select the specific practice (if you have more than one, type at least 3 letters of the practice name in the Lockdown Text Box in the upper right hand corner of Vericle, then click it.)
  • Select the initial month to define the maroon background radar, and select the final month to define the green foreground rada
  • Click on specific KPIs for detailed graph

At the end of the day, the success of your physical therapy practice depends on more than one variable or one person. But keeping an eye on the metrics that matter will help you reach your destination.

Physical Therapy Practice Management | Monthly Health Check: Is Red bad?

Physical Therapy practice health monitorAs part of your physical therapy software and practice management solution, every month your SPOC has a Monthly Health Check (MHC) with you. These are designed to review the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Metrics that most attribute to the success of your physical therapy practice. It also gives us time to review the opportunities that are present and renew our goals for your practice.

When we show these KPI in the form of a radar graph to clients we immediately hear two questions:
  1. What does all the red mean?
  2. What does all the green mean?
The answer to the first question is simple. The red area is a graphical display of the goals we have established for your physical therapy practice.

 

So, does this mean that red is bad? No.

 

Red is the center of the bulls-eye that we are trying to fill to optimize the success of your practice. The goal of all the red is to fill it with as much green as possible, then redefine your physical therapy practice goals to increase the amount of red that you see. This will continuously drive your practice forward to new levels of success.

 

The answer to the second question “What does all the green mean?” is a little more complex.

 

The green is a combination of two things. First, it takes into account the trend that your physical therapy practice has been showing over the last year in working toward your goal. This means that is you are trending toward your goal more green will be filled, if you are trending away from your goal, less. The second part of the green is the average of the last three months and how close to your goal you are. If your goal is 100 visits and for the last three months you have averaged 75 visits you will see more green to be filled. If you have averaged 30 visits then less green will be filled.

 

What do you do when there is only green and no red? This tells you that it is time to adjust your goals! You have accomplished what you have originally set out to improve by partnering with bestPT and our practice management program and service. Remember, the individual KPI and metrics can be changed independently of each other.

Watch this short video about the Practice Health Monitor:

Your SPOC can help you define new goals during the MHC to continue to enhance the success of your physical therapy practice and your bottom line.